


Winter Hunt

by Aeternitas



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-10
Updated: 2013-07-10
Packaged: 2017-12-18 09:27:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/878272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aeternitas/pseuds/Aeternitas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arya Stark, unwillingly married to Ramsay Bolton, is taken out by her husband for a hunting trip.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Winter Hunt

**Author's Note:**

> This story is a small part of a still-unfinished work. I've always been curious about a (very hypothetical) situation where the real Arya Stark, instead of Jeyne Poole, was forced into marriage to Ramsay Bolton. The main story has been in the works for quite some time, so I just wanted to put out the one chapter that's actually finished. So, yeah, think of this as a "teaser" and not a full one-shot story...

Soft snowflakes fell on a silent world. In the dawn gloom, there was neither sound nor color, and no movement but the silent riders leaving the snow-mantled castle. After a night dark beyond darkness, the dawn was pale and wan. A winter cold and everlasting beyond the memory of man, like the onset of a sickness, dimming away the world. 

The six hunters made their way over the snows, silent as shadows. Theon Greyjoy was filled with a growing unease, but dared not speak a word. He had learned that lesson long ago. _Hold your tongue or lose it_ , he knew. He was mounted on a dappled grey mare, a steed far too fine for such a wretched creature as him. Once upon a time, Theon had been a graceful horseman and skilled in the saddle. Now he rode with his back bent, his feet hanging limp in the stirrups, and his maimed hands barely holding the reins. Ill at ease in the saddle as he was, he paid the horse no heed. Wary, he kept his eyes on Ramsay Bolton. 

Like the puppets of a mummer’s shadow play, six dark figures against a world of whites and greys, the hunting party rode toward the Wolfswood. The groom and bride were at the front, Theon following close behind. Then there were three men; Damon Dance-for-me, Skinner and Ben Bones. _Lord Roose’s men, no matter what Ramsay thinks they are. Whatever he will do, Lord Roose always knows._

Ramsay’s voice broke the silence. “Don’t be so sad. We’re hunting a wolf today.”

At the head of the hunting party, Ramsay wore a sable cloak with a thick fur collar. His neck was red from the cold, but a slight smile danced on his pale lips and in his paler eyes. Arya Stark was mounted beside him. The girl was wrapped in grey and white lambswool, and beneath the fur-rimmed hood her face was grim as if carved in stone. _Deader than the stone kings in their crypts,_ he thought. Her fair skin had the icy blue tint of a frozen corpse, and her eyes were cold and distant. “A wolf?” 

Ramsay’s smile widened, his breath smoking in the winter air. “A lone one. They’re small this far south of the Wall, not like those unnatural pets of yours.”

Before long, they reached the shadowy eaves of the Wolfswood. The wolf’s tracks led into the forest, Ramsay had said. The hounds had stayed behind, the hunters going before. As they rode in beneath the dark canopy of the wood, Theon cast one last look over his shoulder at Winterfell in the distance. Ancient and mantled with snow, still bearing the scars of the sacking, it seemed a broken ruin from ages long gone. 

A strange sadness welled through Theon as he rode on and peered, a mourning that had the clutch of both childhood memory and premonition. There was an odd beauty even in desolation and ruin, a beauty even children and fools could understand. For a time, Theon suffered the eerie sense that the Long Night had already come and gone, that he walked one of the great cities of the Seven Kingdoms, that these were the ruins of Lannisport or Oldtown or King’s Landing forever buried under the snows. The Long Night had fallen on the world and left none alive, none but them. They were the Last Men, six instead of the hundred of legend, and no matter how far they travelled, how many horizons they outran, all they would find was broken ruins and snows drifting over the dead.  
The frozen world became strange with loneliness. And quiet, very quiet. 

“Here we are.”

They stopped in a forest glade, an open clearing among the snow-crowned ironwoods and spruces and soldier pines. Ramsay reined in his red stallion, Blood, his hooves crunching against the pine needles and snow on the forest floor. _I have seen this place before._ In his old life, Theon had raced with Robb in this very place. But the memories of childhood games and Robb’s laughter were painful, and he never dwelt on them long. Now, Robb’s sister was sitting on the horse beside him, her iron-grey eyes staring into the distance. _I was never a Stark, I could never be, but I was once almost as a foster-brother to her_ , he thought. _I have to help her. A man would help her._ But he was no man. “My lord?”

“What do you want, Reek?”

“I don’t think it – ”

At that moment, Arya Stark kicked her heels into her horse. The mare broke into a full gallop. Like a storm, she thundered past the men and straight into the wood. Before any of them could begin a pursuit or even sound a warning, Arya stormed into the dark Wolfswood and disappeared amidst the thickets and trees. Left behind in the clearing, Theon only stared after her in stunned silence. The beat of galloping hooves against the forest floor vanished. Girl and horse were gone, leaving behind only a thin cloud of snow thrown up by the hooves. 

_Gone._

The three men-at-arms were shouting and preparing to set off in pursuit of the escaping bride, but Ramsay said nothing. He did not cry out in dismay and rage, did not shout commands at his men, did not turn on his Reek in a black wrath. _Why does this feel so strange?_ This was what Theon had hoped for. He should have been elated at Arya’s escape from her cruel husband, overjoyed that she was free from her tormentor at last. Yet he only felt a growing fear, an icy knife scraping along his spine. 

At long last, Ramsay turned Blood around and faced Theon. There was no anger on Ramsay’s face. Instead, amusement glittered in his ghost-pale eyes. 

_He knew this would happen. He wanted it all along._

“I told you we’re hunting a wolf today.” His widest smile, and his cruelest. “A she-wolf.”

A sickening surge of terror went through Theon. _If his lordship’s bride escapes for good, Lord Roose will be wroth. What will he do to Ramsay, and then what will Ramsay do to me?_

***


End file.
